Membership

Member Programs

Join 488,000 other accomplished scientists, engineers, students, entrepreneurs and business leaders that make Optica their home.

Optica member programs provide you with opportunities to advance your scientific ambitions, expand your professional network and influence the future of optics and photonics worldwide. From cutting edge technical courses to professional development workshops for students through emeritus, membership has something for you at every step of your career. Join your business colleagues at Optica industry events and access quality information, unparalleled professional networking, and unique opportunities to grow your business.

Connect with colleagues and thought leaders while forging new collaborative partnerships. Optica structures meetings with live and on-demand technical content to accommodate your schedule.

Membership Sponsorship Flyer (PDF)

5G Summit and Webinar Series 

Examine key critical 5G and beyond technologies that are becoming core business features.

Advancing
Mid-Managers Summit
The is a professional development program designed for those in middle management positions.
Early Career Professionals 
Programs
The Society offers a variety of programs and resources for our Early Career Professional members.
Education Outreach
Programs
Check out our optical experiments to bring educational 
entertainment to the family while teaching them some physics!
Engineer Programs 
The Society connects you to a world of engineering research and a wealth of information at your fingertips. 
Executive Forum
The premier annual event for leaders in optical networking and communications
Industry Workshops
A unique opportunity for speakers and the audience to strengthen collaborations across the ecosystem and build a more effective business.
Sponsored Webinars 

Reach your target market and generate new business leads.

Student Programs
Get access to career building networking opportunities, industry defining conferences and events, and to cutting edge research.
Technology Showcases
Looking for new products for your organization and information about the latest technology? Get an in-depth look as Optica corporate members present and explain their cutting-edge technologies. 
Modern Phase Detection: Beyond the Lock-in Amplifier

19 April 2023, 3:00 PM — 4:30 PM

During this special presentation, you’ll learn next-gen strategies for phase detection. We’ll compare traditional lock-in methods with the new wave of dedicated phasemeters, which can achieve wrap-free, noise-optimized phase measurements in applications from oscillator analysis to gravitational wave detection. We’ll demonstrate how phase detection on software-defined instrumentation allows for precise measurements and lossless interconnection of instruments. You’ll also learn how to overcome common lock-in amplifier challenges and see a demonstration of relevant use cases, including: ● Optimizing laser measurement and control ● Multi-frequency demodulation ● Leveraging FPGA processing for your experiment

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Balancing the photon budget for optical neurophysiology

On Demand

26 February 2021, 8:00 AM — 9:30 AM

As genetically-encoded fluorescence indicators of calcium and membrane potential evolve and improve, optical methods advance to exploit their full potential for neurophysiology research. With so many choices, the neurophysiologist needs a systematic framework for comparing and predicting the performance of indicator/imaging system combinations. Dr. Foust will present such a framework for which the key figure of merit is the signal-to-noise ratio of the time-varying fluorescence signal. In this context I will also describe our efforts to boost photon budgets for membrane potential and calcium imaging with multi-focal two-photon and light-field imaging systems.


Mobile optical pluggables (MOPA) – solutions, technologies and standardization of optics for 5G

On Demand

24 February 2021, 5:00 PM — 6:00 PM

This talk will outline the recent work by 5 leading companies (Ericsson, Nokia, Sumitomo, Lumentum, II-VI) in the initiative called mobile optical pluggables (MOPA). The MOPA initiative has produced a 55-page technical paper outlining all relevant optical solutions for 5G networks. These solutions, called optical blueprints, cover all parts of the 5G network: the low-layer split (aka fronthual), high-layer split, and backhaul, for all relevant distances (2-80 km), and technologies (grey optics, WDM optics, packet multiplexing, PON). Finally, an outlook into future needs and technologies will be made.


Alignment and metrology of the Roman Space Telescope Grism component

On Demand

24 February 2021, 3:00 PM — 4:30 PM

This presentation will go over the various techniques used to measure the optical performance of the grism component of the Wide Field Instrument on board the Roman Space Telescope.


Developing Requirements for Scientific Instrumentation

On Demand

23 February 2021, 3:00 PM — 4:30 PM

The benefits of systems engineering are widely promoted with varying degrees of understanding. This webinar is based on many years of experience designing and building complex systems incorporating all of the engineering disciplines (optics, mechanics, electronics, and software). For me, understanding and using systems engineering has been a natural approach driven by my instincts (even before it was a newfound contemporary “thing”). Systems engineering is about balance and perspective. The word “system” conveys the inherently multidisciplinary nature of the work. The engineering work is fundamentally to hold a perspective that makes sure nothing is overlooked that could affect the outcome and to make sure that the best balance is achieved between all of the competing needs and wants that drive the creation of the system in the first place. Systems engineering starts with requirements, and then systems engineering follows on to serve and protect the requirements by constantly evaluating error budgets and the compliance of the system with the requirements as the system is designed and built. In this webinar you will learn by example: - How to approach the development of requirements that satisfies your stakeholders - How to use one sentence definitions to clarify ideas and gain consensus - How to define and manage expectations - How to gain and confirm requirements “completeness”.


Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits

On Demand

11 February 2021, 3:00 PM — 4:30 PM

Silicon photonics has become a mainstream technology for high volume, low cost manufacturing of photonic devices and integrated circuits for a wide variety of applications. These include optical transceivers for datacom and telecommunications, navigation including LIDARs and gyroscopes, biomedical sensors including lab on a chip, analog transmission for military and space applications and precision timing and optical clocks. Silicon photonic foundries exist on three continents with volumes in the millions of units per year. Laser integration on silicon has been commercialized using heterogeneous integration and prospects look good for epitaxial lasers on silicon. Here John Bowers will give an overview of recent research in the area and prospects for future results.


A Decade of Progress toward a Low-Cost, Fast, High-Performance Photonic Switch

On Demand

3 February 2021, 2:00 PM — 3:30 PM

In this talk, Dr. Benjamin Lee will review the progress over the past ten years in developing a photonic switch solution that can potentially be manufactured and assembled with low cost, while offering fast reconfigurability and high performance. Beginning with initial work on device development and scaling to recent work on large-scale photonic integrated circuit implementations.


Immersive Optical Engineering Systems

On Demand

18 November 2020, 12:00 PM — 6:30 PM

Join us for two exciting courses in one live training from industry leaders! The first course will feature Robert Norwood: "From Optics & Photonics Innovation to the Marketplace." This course covers the process of technology development in the photonics industry from the perspectives of both formal processes and case studies. Key aspects of the commercialization process, including intellectual property, new product development processes, technical marketing and team building, are treated in an interactive program informed by the instructor’s 15 years of industry experience in both large corporate research and development organizations and entrepreneurial startups. This course will emphasize the optical engineer’s role in a product development environment. The course will run from 12:00 to 15:00. The second course will be "Optical Systems Engineering" taught by Keith Kasunic. Optical Systems Engineering emphasizes first-order, system-level estimates of optical performance. Building on the basic principles of optical design, this course uses various examples to illustrate the systems-engineering processes of requirements analysis, feasibility and trade studies, requirements flowdown and allocation, error budgets, and component specifications. Topics covered will include an introduction to systems engineering, geometrical optics, image quality, radiometry, detectors and FPAs, optomechanics, and the integration of these topics for developing a complete optical system. This course will run from 16:00 to 18:30.


Free Space Optical Wireless Communications: Fundamentals and Potential Applications with a vision for 5G and Beyond

On Demand

12 November 2020, 9:30 AM — 4:00 PM

This course will provide fundamentals of Optical Wireless Communications with special emphasis on technologies and techniques including systems design and performance analysis in achieving high bandwidth, much higher than that exists today by RF communications. The course will address the OWC systems basic block diagrams discussing the systems components and subsystems design issues in order to address a number of challenges such as atmospheric turbulence, mobility and security Various options relevant to future optical wireless communication terminals incorporating indoor, terrestrial, aerial and space and underwater OWC will also be discussed briefly. The course will also cover Optical wireless communication with recent Visible Light Communications (VLC) technology, offering alternative solution to replace Wi-Fi with Li-Fi (light fidelity). The course will explain technology for incorporating with the emerging 5G, the new frontier of mobile technology, Internet of Things (IoT) and other future applications. The course will finally address future mobile and wireless technologies to even extend the vision of 5G to more ambitious future application scenarios.


Mastering Impromptu Speaking

On Demand

29 September 2020, 3:00 PM — 4:00 PM

Some of our most critical speaking situations happen when we are unprepared. The way in which we speak off the cuff is partly how our leadership skills will be measured. Impromptu speaking is a skill which we can build with practice and feedback. In this interactive training, you will learn a strategic framework for speaking clearly and concisely with no advanced preparation. You will receive instructor feedback by volunteering to answer questions using the strategic framework you just learned. You will retain the strategies by role-playing difficult and impromptu questions among peers in a breakout group. You will leave the session with more confidence and more tools to speak up in your most important professional settings.


Visible Light Communications for 5G-and-beyond

On Demand

28 September 2020, 1:00 PM — 2:30 PM

Future wireless networks have to deal with a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of device classes, deployment environments, and mobility levels. Coexisting wireless technologies is an encouraging approach to revolutionize future networks. The radio-frequency (RF) based WiFi access points have been already considered to enable indoor traffic off-loading from LTE-cells. In addition to RF, optical wireless technologies such as visible light communications (VLC) open up a new opportunity. VLC is an emerging technology that uses, for example, the existing indoor lighting infrastructure to offer data transmission combined with high-quality illumination. The technology has the potential to add capacity and to be an attractive complementary to off-load data from existing RF networks. In this webinar, we focus on describing the potential of VLC, highlighting different research challenges, and articulating classical as well as machine learning-based approaches to deal with these challenges.


Demystifying the Publishing Process

On Demand

12 August 2020, 9:00 AM — 11:00 AM

Join OSA editors-in-chief, Miguel Alonso (Optics Letters) and Kurt Busch (Journal of the Optical Society of America B), for a comprehensive overview of the OSA publication process. Learn how to prepare your manuscript for submission and how to navigate the peer review process, as well as tips for responding to reviewers and guidelines for ethical authorship. While this session will focus on OSA journals and may be particularly relevant for new authors, the skills and information are widely applicable and will be of interest to researchers at all stages of their careers.


Enabling Technologies for Optical Transport and Access Networks in the 5G Era

On Demand

4 August 2020, 9:00 AM — 10:30 AM

Optical networks are supporting a wide range of communication services including residential services, enterprise services, and mobile services. The 5th-generation (5G) wireless brings to optical networking new requirements such as high bandwidth, low latency, accurate synchronization, and the ability to perform network slicing and autonomous operation etc. All these requirements are being addressed by the so-called 5G-oriented optical networks. This OSA webinar aims to highlight the dramatic technological advances in optical transport and access networks over the last few years and provide new perspectives on what to expect in the 5G era.


The Stage-Gate product development process

On Demand

23 July 2020, 3:00 PM — 4:30 PM

Developing successful technology products is so much easier with the right systems in place. The most important development system is a solid Product Development Process (PDP), which if done correctly, will improve both continuity and good communication in the development team while retaining the flexibility and innovation that are required for a competitive industry. We will review the widely used Stage-Gate Process, and provide a template that will enable you to implement it quickly at your company.


High capacity and intelligent optical transmission and networking for 5G/B5G

On Demand

13 July 2020, 10:00 AM — 11:30 AM

This webinar will introduce the recent progress and future trend of optical transmission and networking technologies to support the deployment of 5G and B5G. Advanced design of coherent optical transmission systems and AI-driven elastic optical networks will be discussed. Application of coherent technology for 5G fronthaul will also be described. 8+ years of research experience in coherent optical communications. 4+ year of industrial R&D experience in next generation optical transports.


Passive Optical Network for 5G Fronthaul

On Demand

2 June 2020, 10:00 AM — 11:30 AM

This webinar will first introduce the passive optical network (PON) technologies and the latest standards effort. It will focus on the PON applications as 5G fronthaul transport network. Bandwidth and latency are analyzed as the two key requirements of 5G fronthaul. Various mappings between 5G network CU/DU/RU to PON are discussed to meet the requirements. Recent industry test and trial results will be reported.


Advancing Mid-Managers Summit: Executive Presence

On Demand

20 May 2020, 2:00 PM — 5:00 PM

How does your executive presence show up when you interact with your colleagues and leadership? If you already have a strong sense of presence, how do you sharpen those skills? Whether you’re leading important team meetings or presenting yourself as a candidate for a senior leadership role, your confidence and passion speak just as loudly as your words. In this interactive session, we will demystify the concept of executive presence and break it down into concrete skills that you can apply in real-life situations. You’ll leave the session with practical, immediately applicable strategies for speaking with confidence and presence in front of employees, colleagues and senior leadership.


Neurophotonics: reading and writing neuronal activity at the relevant spatiotemporal scales

On Demand

9 April 2020, 10:00 AM — 11:30 AM

Dr. Valentina Emiliani will review the most significant breakthroughs of the past years, which enable reading and writing neuronal activity at the relevant spatiotemporal scale for brain circuits manipulation, with particular emphasis on the most recent advances in circuit optogenetics.


Mueller Polarimetry of Structured and Random Media: from Metrology to Biomedicine

On Demand

7 April 2020, 10:00 AM — 11:30 AM

The basics of optical polarization and Mueller polarimetry as well as the review of physical phenomena of interaction of polarized light with different complex media (layered, periodical, scattering, anisotropic and absorbing) will be introduced first. Then it will be demonstrated that theoretical and experimental studies of interaction of polarized light with matter provide a lot of valuable information about the macroscopic and microscopic properties of object under study, including its diattenuation, birefringence, depolarization, scattering and absorption properties, surface topography, etc. This information can be used in numerous applications, from optical metrology to cancer detection and staging. The basic advantages of optical polarimetric techniques consist in being relatively low-cost, fast, non-contact and non-destructive, thus allowing in-situ and real-time measurements in many applications.


The Rise of Freeform Surfaces in the Design of Optical Systems

6 April 2020, 9:00 AM — 10:30 AM

Freeform optics has set a new path for optical system design across a wide range of applications spanning from microscopy to space optics, including the billion $ consumer market of near-eye displays for augmented reality that set us on this technology path in the first place. Today, freeform optics have been demonstrated to yield compact, achromatic, and high-performance imaging systems that are poised to enable the science of tomorrow. In this webinar, we will briefly introduce freeform optics and highlight emerging design methods. We will then present success stories and highlight active research in digital viewfinder, imager, and spectrometer designs that we anticipate will stimulate cooperation towards accelerating gain in enabling knowledge in freeform optics.


Developing Profitable Technology Products

On Demand

26 February 2020, 3:00 PM — 4:00 PM

Developing products that make money is the primary goal of most technology companies, but it’s not an easy task to accomplish. Many factors impact whether a product is ultimately successful or not. Learn an overview of the important fundamentals for developing products that will make money for your company.

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